United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc has introduced features that allow ‘group transfer’ and ‘transfer to telephone number’ on the refreshed version of its mobile app.
Disclosing these features in an online press conference, Samson Aneke, Group Head, Digital Banking, UBA, said that the group transfer feature was introduced to empower micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), while the feature that allows transfer to telephone numbers is to enhance financial inclusion across Africa against the background of the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He explained that the ‘Group transfer’ option allows users to create groups, save members and transfer funds to up to 100 members at the same time.
“With this option, the user can do a single lump sum debit and multiple credits to beneficiaries irrespective of banks where their accounts are domiciled,” he said, adding that this makes the refreshed UBA mobile app, the first app in Africa to be able to pay salaries, thus addressing a major need in the MSME space.”
Explaining further, Aneke said “We are pushing services to what we call Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). These are for sustainability, banks that would survive in the coming days would mean that the more BYOD you do, the more are ready to survive. We are taking services to the devices that customers hold themselves. You would be happier to use the device you came out with from your home to transact than shared facilities.
“We are thinking of voice banking across various channels, we are thinking of image withdrawals where we can just scan your image and you can withdraw. So some of the things that would replace POS, some are already here while some are still in the making like QR code we are already in the current app, so you wouldn’t need POS. we are making QR code so easy so that you can on your app the merchant to like and use regularly.” – Vanguard.
